The Vatican blasted back at a UN-authored Rights of Children report, saying its criticism of the church's stand on homosexuality is driven by critics of the church's "non-negotiable" teachings.

The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, whose members have included such nations as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Uganda and Thailand,accused the Vatican Wednesday of "systematically" adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed their crimes.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the head of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, told Vatican Radio that non-governmental organizations which favor gay marriage probably influenced the committee to reinforce an "ideological line" in the report. He did not note the irony of nations like Syria, which has used poison gas on children, Uganda, where kids have been forced to fight, kill and die in wars and Thailand, which has long been accused of tolerating a child sex trade, having served on the committee, which currently consists of representatives from 18 nations.

The UN report also severely criticized the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children's rights and their access to health care are guaranteed.

The church's critics believe the report will put renewed pressure on Pope Francis to move decisively on the abuse front and make good on pledges to create a Vatican commission to study sex abuse and recommend best practices to fight it. The commission was announced at the spur of the moment in December, but few details have been released since then.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the head of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, told Vatican Radio that non-governmental organizations which favor gay marriage probably influenced the committee to reinforce an "ideological line" in the report.

The committee also urged the Vatican to amend its canon law to identify circumstances where access to abortion can be permitted for children, such as to save the life of a young mother. It urged the Holy See to ensure that sex education, including access to information about contraception and preventing HIV, is mandatory in Catholic schools. It called for the Holy See to use its moral authority to condemn discrimination against homosexual children or children raised by same-sex couples.

The Vatican said it would study the report and in a statement reiterated its commitment to defending and protecting children's rights that are enshrined in the treaty. But it took issue with the committee's recommendations to change core church teaching on life.

"The Holy See does, however, regret to see in some points of the concluding observations an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of human person and in the exercise of religious freedom," the Vatican said.

Austen Ivereigh, coordinator of Catholic Voices, a church advocacy group, said the report was a "shocking display of ignorance and high-handedness."

He said it failed to acknowledge the progress that has been made in recent years and that the Catholic Church in many places is now considered a leader in safeguarding children. And he noted that the committee seemed unable to grasp the distinction between the responsibilities and jurisdiction of the Holy See, and local churches on the ground.

"It takes no account of the particularities of the Holy See, treating it as if it were the HQ of a multinational corporation," he said in an e-mail.

This is of a piece with the population growth crowd, which has considered the Church their major stumbling block for years, with her opposition to contraception and abortion on demand.

Socialist secularists, disguised a ZPGrs, you mean. Then there are the Islamic countries on the committee that have a high birth rate and want Christians to have a low birth rate. There is lots of self-interest behind this document.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has just released a report on the way the Vatican has responded to the sexual abuse of minors by priests. The 15-page report contains not a single footnote, endnote, or any other mode of attribution. But it does provide plenty of evidence as to its real agenda.

The U.N. panel is using the sexual abuse of minors as a pretext for its true objective: it wants the Vatican to submit to its authority, and not just in instances involving international lawit wants the Catholic Church to change Canon Law and to adopt a secular sexual ethics. As such, it is one of the most ambitious power-grab efforts ever undertaken by a U.N. committee. The panel is also profoundly ignorant of the data.

On p. 3 of the report, the panel says the Holy See should undertake the necessary steps to withdraw all its reservations and to ensure the [U.N.] Conventions precedence over internal laws and regulations. (Its emphasis.) It is quite explicit: The Committee recommends that the Holy See undertake a comprehensive review of its normative framework, in particular Canon Law, with a view to ensuring its full compliance with the Convention.

In other words, the teaching body of the Catholic Church, the Magisterium, i.e., the pope in communion with the bishops, should yield to the U.N. This would be the equivalent of asking the United States Congress to make sure its laws are in compliance with U.N. strictures. Hubris is too mild a word to describe this unmitigated arrogance.

On pp. 12-13, the panel says it wants the Catholic Church to change its teachings on abortion and contraception; it also says the Church needs to do more about HIV/AIDS.

It is painfully obvious that these panelists have not thought through this issue. To wit: if everyone followed the Churchs teachings on sexuality, we would not have this problem in the first place. To be exact, those who acquire HIV/AIDS typically do so because they live a reckless life, in sharp contradistinction to the Churchs plea for restraint.

The panel is so intent on policing the Church that it demands a Canon Law change in the use of the term illegitimate children. It also directs the Vatican to order Catholic schools to change its textbooks, getting rid of alleged gender stereotypes. Not only is this another example of its abuse of power, the panel provides not a single piece of evidence to buttress its claim. Someone should also tell these experts that the Vatican does not tell Catholic schools what textbooks, or curricula, it should adopt. But to control freaks, delegation is a difficult concept to grasp.

The panel lectures the Vatican on the need for awareness programs, urging systematic training for those who work with minors. Just who do they think started these initiatives? Were not the ones who lack mandatory training programsthe guilty parties are found in other religious communities, and in the public schools. This explains why sexual abuse is not a problem in Catholic communities today the way it is elsewhere. The panel needs to get up to speed, assuming it has any real interest in this issue.

On p. 8, the panel instructs the Vatican to end corporal punishment, saying it must amend both Canon Law and Vatican City State laws. Ironically, the U.N. has now detailed how 10,000 Syrian children have been killed and tortured in the last three years.

Syrian kids are being raped and beaten with metal cabals, whips and wooden and metal batons; they are also being subjected to electric shocks, including to the genitals. Their fingernails and toenails are being ripped out of them, and they are being lacerated with cigarette burns. Most of these barbaric acts are being conducted by government agents, yet there is no demand that Syrian officials yield to the U.N. It is too busy wondering if Sister Mary Alice is taking a ruler to a miscreant student.

The one attempt at providing evidence is a colossal failure: on p. 7 it cites the Magdalene Laundries as an institution that forced girls to work in slavery like conditions and were often subject to inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment as well as to physical and sexual abuse. This is a bald-face lie: the McAleese Report, an investigation authorized by the Irish government, shows that none of this is true. To read my analysis, Myths of the Magdalene Laundries, see the Special Reports section on the Catholic League website. The panels report is libelous.

Finally, the report says the Church needs to end the practice of baby boxes. In many countries, there are drop boxes next to orphanages; they are placed there to entice girls who are pregnant out-of-wedlock, and who cannot care for their babies, to allow others to raise their child. It is a humane practice, one that is widely practiced in South Korea. What is not humane is to kill babies in utero, which is precisely what this U.N. panel recommends.

For sheer demagoguery, this report cannot be beaten. It is as malicious as it is inaccurate.

The abusive priests were homosexuals. Around 80% of the victims were boys.

Homosexualists like to distinguish pedophilia from homosexuality, claiming that the former is not about sex but power. But as most of the boys who were abused were nearing or in puberty, those acts were not pedophilia, per se, but homosexual; that is, they were based on the priests attraction to dicks not power.

Same-sex attraction disorder is not something that’s going away any time soon (though I think some research dollars should be spent to try); but it should be kept out of the public, particularly children’s, view as it has for thousands of years.

If the UN wants to attack the church on the abuse scandal, then it has to attack the homosexual priesthood as part of the issue.

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